Just Drive: This Theon Design 911 Isn’t Just Another Hot Rod Porsche

Описание: #porsche911 #theondesign #restomod #auto510 #automobile #bmw #mercedes The Theon Design Coupe is a £750,000 restomod based on the Porsche 964, and in this video Rory Reid finds out if it earns that price. The team at Theon has upgraded almost every part of the car.

The bodywork is now carbon fibre. The cabin is rebuilt with a more luxurious interior. The engine and exhaust are reworked for more power and a sharper sound. The chassis and handling are refined to feel more focused on the road.

Rory takes the car out to see how all of these changes come together. Is it worth three quarters of a million pounds. Is this the ultimate expression of a classic 964. And does this restomod capture something that modern sports cars have lost.
With so many restomod 911s out there, it’s satisfying to find one that makes sure to do its own thing.
Watch the full Autotrader review to find out.Restomods are big business these days, and hopped-up and modernized Porsche 911s rule the roost with more than a dozen manufacturers competing for your nostalgic big bucks. Sure, re-tweaked Porsche 356s, Land Rover Defenders, Ford Broncos and Mustangs, Toyota Land Cruisers, and even Lamborghini Diablos are all high-ticket things you can buy. But the top-level restomod competition begins with everyboy’s dream sports car, the 911. Theon Design, a small car maker from the U.K.’s motorsports valley, has been building carbon-fiber-bodied 964-generation 911s with potent 4.0-liter air-cooled flat-six engines since 2019. The upshot for us is the fact Theon’s co-founder and designer, Adam Hawley, brought the first U.S. customer car out to Los Angeles and let us have a go with it.Design First
It would be impossible to write this Theon Design review without mentioning Singer Vehicle Design and its highly desirable “reimagined” 911s. Yes, Singer was the first company to put a hot-rodded Porsche 911 into production and, from the outside looking in, it has been incredibly successful. Singer’s formula is to take a Porsche 964 (the subsequent model after the original G-body 911, produced from 1989 to 1994) and make it look like a café-racer 911 from about 1973. A larger, more powerful engine is installed, and the custom interiors are literal and figurative works of art. Singers are notoriously difficult to purchase, though, and these days the entry-level car will set you back around $900,000. Famously, Singer makes it difficult for journalists to review its cars, so we have no idea how they drive, given that more than 10 years have passed since we sampled one. Credit where credit is due, however: Singer created the fancy, reworked big-ticket 911 market.So What?
Why mention Singer? Well, the Theon Design 911 we drove shares the basic elements. All Theon Design 911s began their lives as 964s. The company strips off the body panels and replaces them with carbon-fiber pieces. The resulting shape does bear a resemblance to a Singeresque backdated 911, but look more closely—perhaps you have to look too closely—and you’ll see how Hawley (a former BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover, and Lotus designer) and his team have made a number of subtle changes to the 911’s famous form. Starting up front, there’s more space between the turn signal/running lights and the headlights. The lower lip appears to have a close-trimmed goatee. The wing mirrors are cribbed from the Porsche Speedster Concept while the rear hips are borderline obscene. Speaking of borderline, some of the flourishes might result from OCD, such as the grille, which comprises 11 separate horizonal pieces of aluminum, each one a slightly different length to mimic the shape of a 930 grille. Porsche geeks will drool.